ProudCanadian ProudCanadian

IDEA: Special treatment of ships with no offensive capability

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IDEA: Special treatment of ships with no offensive capability

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was thinking about ships that have no points in any of the 3 offensive type categories. Here's what was bouncing around inside my head:

NO-OFFENSE SHIP = FREE KILL
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Just based on the descriptions of defenses in GalCiv 2 Beta, it seems clear that they are non-offensive in nature. That is to say, the defenses do not "shoot back". For instance, if a ship has all kinds of Shields, Armor and ECM, but no weapons, it has no way to retaliate against an attacker. Given time, an attacking ship with just one puny Laser should eventually be able to wear them down and destroy them. At the very least, it should end in a draw if the attacker has really inferior weapons, but should not end with the attacker being destroyed.
I am proposing that a ship with no offensive points should be considered automatically killed when attacked by any ship that does have offensive capabilities (similar to the mini-freighters in GalCiv 1).

NO OFFENSE/DEFENSE = LOWER COST/MAINTENANCE
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So why take the unwise move of designing a ship with no offense or defense? Maybe the incentive should be a GREATLY reduced production cost and maintenance cost. If you want a justification, how about this: a ship with no weapons or armor requires less expensive components to produce. No weapons means no weapons or repair crews, which should be less expensive in maintenance costs.
I am proposing that a ship with no offense or defense points should have a GREATLY reduced production and maintenance cost.

NEW SHIP DESIGN OPTION: NON-COMBAT
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In order to make a ship design that falls under the category I mentioned above, the Ship Design screen should have an option to flag the design as "Non-Combat" type. This will give your design the cheaper cost described above, but will also make you a sitting duck for any idiot with a couple Corvettes and a bad attitude. When you set the Non-Combat flag for your design, it should disable the weapon and armor menus on the design screen.


I think this is a good idea, but only the Stardock folks know if this concept would complicate the AI. What do the rest of you think?

- Proud Canadian
ideas
21,707 views 32 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That might be a problem early in the game. You may start off with 1 weapon tech, but not have any of the defense techs yet. You could make an argument that the hull of the ship itself is "weak armor", but then what about Shields and ECM?

Again, the solution could be that you simply can not create a military ship without at least one attack and one defence. If you do not have technology yet - bad for you - the ship can not be created. Same way as in civ games the weakest unit has statistics of 1/1
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
OR maybe level 1 weaponry/level 1 armor is entirely free...

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ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This is of cause an option, but GalCiv I did not let you build the military ships from the begining. And then there is another question of what kind of shield and what kind of weapon is free (there are 3 types of each). So I would say you have to discover the technology first.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If any of you have read the Man-Kzin war series by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, you would know that there are ways for an unarmed vessel to destroy an enemy vessel. Engines produce alot of energy that has to go somewhere .

If the enemy is firing homing missile at me and I have very good ecm I might be able to cause it to target the enemy vessel.

There are all sorts of ways to kill someone with out a "weapon".
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually, I thought of something like that when I was saying "Think of a weapon useless for attacking."

Imagine if you will, a "drive configuration" that rather than providing propulsion, gives you the ability to damage other ships. The downsides of this are: 1) easily detected from beyond the distance the makeshift weapon is effective at, and 2) takes enough time to configure that if anyone was in range that didn't want to fight, they could run outside the effective range of the effect before the effect achieves critical mass.

Presto, here's something that all ships could do, that would be useless for attacking ships since they could run away while you're immobilized reconfiguring, etc. Of course, you could still attack something immobile, and it's not what starbases are doing anyway since they don't have much in the way of propulsion, so quite probably not something available to GC1.

Personally, I don't see drive heat working well in the GC universe, mostly because if the engines gave off enough heat to work as a weapon, you'd run out of fuel too fast because any form of energy given off that isn't directly related to the task at hand is that much wasted fuel. A perfectly efficient machine (or star drive) would give off no waste heat, light, or sound (inside the ship, I know, it's not going anywhere outside the ship).
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the original GC, ships with 0 attack added half their defense value to attack. With defenses in GC being chaff/armour/point def, this seems less realistic. Unless ships can withdraw from combat, defense without offense seems pointless.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I certainly agree that it seems less realistic taken literally. However, this would be a fundamental change in the game. Of course, there are other fundamental changes going on, so that hardly makes it unlikely. The question is, what would this change bring to the game? Better immersion, probably. The need to arm just about everything, especially starbases, definitely.

I'm not sure what it implies, but I'm actually a little surprized that none of the devs have commented on this thread, even if just to say "we know what we're doing, you'll see."